Kindle Freetime Unlimited is not working due to a major bug

If you have a Kindle Fire for Kids tablet or a subscription to Kindle Freetime Unlimited there is a major bug you need to know about. Thousands of parents are reporting that their kids accounts are not staying registered. There is also another bug that is asking parents to input a password, where no passwords exist, so its impossible to even use the tablet. Amazon is aware of the problem and said a fix is going to be available sometime next week.

Here are some of the customer complaints pertaining to the Freetime Unlimited issue.

“All 3 of my kids kindle fires are messed up. 2 of them unregistered themselves and one just won’t open anything, books, apps, videos,games. I deleted some files for one kid today because she got the error message that her memory was too full. And it wouldn’t let her log on to the WiFi. Then we shut it off and turned it right back on and it had wiped all 3 kids profiles. It shows my profile but only factory preloaded content. And it won’t accept my password to unlock the parental controls. One of my kids uses her device to take notes on. Lots of data gone?”

“Woke up to deregistered kindles this morning. Kindle HD 8.9 & Kindle 7. Both are for the kids and they use Freetime (not freetime unlimited). Re-registered but apps that use WiFi give error saying there is no internet. If the fix is going to take over a week then my prime membership renewal due in August should be free. Also freetime unlimited should be offered for free for a year due to inconvenience of losing all app data and progress. PS. Kindle HD 10 did not deregister but ever since Update last week my battery drains in less then an hour. Kindle was purchased less than 7 months ago and battery would last all day before update.”

“I powered up my son’s Kindle fire today and the only profile on it says “owner” and is requesting a pass code. It was working fine when he went to bed last night and no one touched it since then. It asks for a pass code, but since it isn’t my profile, I cannot unlock it”

Are you having a Freetime or Freetime Unlimited problem? Drop a comment below.

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

My daughter’s kindle had this problem. It’s good to know what it was. I re-registered it and that seemed to fix the problem.

Jennifer Stephan

Still not working.

Johan Evanston

The Fire 10 tablet we have is barely functional in Free Time. It is painfully slow downloading (when it will download at all). We have spent hours downloading content in Free Time, and sometimes the next day, it has all disappeared. The functionality seems correlated with internet connection, but even at home it can’t be counted on. We are on our 2nd tablet warranty replacement since August, 2016, all for hardware issues, and this 3rd tablet is not any better. There is a problem at every possible turn. It’s unbelievable considering how great the Fire 7 HD tablet was. The only drawback was storage space, and that seems like a dream problem to have now in comparison. The new Fire has an SD card, but has difficulty communicating with it, and the settings are awkward and need tweaking constantly depending on available space, maybe, because no problem seems to have a consistent solution. Amazon refuses to send a new tablet, and we keep getting refurbished models. They are not following through with promised reimbursements for lost content. In the past I recommended Free time to every person I met, and now I would not recommend the nightmare to anyone. Additionally, the tablet is unequipped with sufficient memory to run all of the preset functions, so to reach anything approaching functionality, you have to go uncheck a lot of things in different areas of settings.

George Clark

I have a Kindle Fire 8 and bought it new in late (Dec?) 2016. On my previous Kindle Fire (a 7), everything worked fine. Within a couple weeks after the Kindle 8 arrived, the device began to act up. At first, I used a password to lock the device. I use the stock alarm clock every morning, but one day when the alarm went off, the device seemed frozen and would not allow me to interact with it. I had to turn the device off to regain control. I called Kindle tech support and they were very helpful, though we never really got to the bottom of the issue, probably because it is so tedious to troubleshoot. We would reset the device to factory specs, and things would work well for several days, and then it would suddenly “lock up” one day, unpredictably, in the morning with the alarm. During the following months, I brought my device down to very basic settings (no password, I am the only user, no FreeTime, no Parental Controls, running in airplane mode most of the time). After two or three months of NOT connecting to the Internet, the device behaved very well with no issues. Then I went on a trip and connected to the Internet. Several days later after returning from the trip, the device acted up again. The alarm clock froze (again), FreeTime was installed (again) and it required a password (again). All of this misbehavior occurred several days after I had reconnected to the Internet. At this point, it seems conclusive to me that Amazon “wants” me to have FreeTime installed, and will install it automatically after a couple weeks on its own, if I have not already done so, once I reconnect to the Internet and the device “calls Mom”. My daughter too has a Kindle 8 and I have stripped it down similarly, though we use Parental Controls (without FreeTime) on her device. We must supply a password, in order for her to purchase and install any app. Her device also behaves properly a few days, and then acts up. FreeTime installs itself and things then go awry. The work-around is to reset the device to factory specs and exclude FreeTime, during the initial setup. But if you connect to the Internet (after the initial setup), it seems that it is only a matter of time, before FreeTime installs itself and things go awry. Why do I put up with this issue? I really like the Kindle Fire 8 for watching downloaded movies on the go. I also like the email app better than the one on my laptop. Lastly, I refuse to spend lots of money on something else. Basically, when I reset to factory specs, I lose nothing and it is easy to reconfigure what I do use.

Anonymous

I am the kid using the tablet, it’s annoying. I keep getting error “404” . Minecraft starts glitching and other games are being annoying. I don’t know why. Reply if this has happened to you cause I’m deperate!

Durruti

Kindle Fire tablets, and Freetime are absolute garbage products. Not only is FireOS poorly optimized, riddled with bugs and handicapped with an absolutely terrible interface design but Freetime (when it works) essentially hijacks the parent’s ability to curate the child’s experience, you either agree to let Amazon curate the experience or GTFO. If you aren’t connected to the internet you lose access to any apps you’ve downloaded through Freetime, and if you are connected then Freetime serves as sort of an appstore front end where Amazon, and Amazon alone, choose which apps and media it feels your child should be using.

I wanted to basically pick a number of apps, turn off wifi and then let my child basically use whatever he wanted within the little playground I created for him…but NOPE. If you aren’t playing in Amazon’s dynamically curated playground…you aren’t playing at all. What’s worse is that Freetime, or maybe the tablets, are fundamentally broken. Some stuff will download, some won’t. Somethings sync, some don’t It’s a total crapshoot as to what is going to work and what won’t.

I’m essentially at my wits end. I’ve got another Fire 7 that I’ve essentially used as a test bed to see what I can do with the platform. I’ve rooted it, stripped of all the Amazon crap I can, put in the ASOP-like Nova Launcher and Gapps. It’s about as close as I can get it to a legit android tablet. So, what I’ve decided is that I’m going to do the same to my son’s tablet. Get rid of all this Amazon shit. Cancel freetime. Set it up with a children’s themed launcher and curate all of the apps myself. I’m never going to buy another Amazon product. They’re garbage. They don’t make tech devices, they make electronic storefronts.